


At the End of the Day

by scioscribe



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Pre-Thor (2011), Redemption, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-20 23:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15544806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: If he were truly in his own past, and he changed it now, he would never again catch up to the Thor he had left behind.  Either that future would be scrubbed away or the universe would split into two paths taken in parallel, with no way for Loki to cross from one to the other.  He was killing them just by being here.  Or—almost worse, in the selfishness of his heart—he was not.  Their lives would go on without him.  They would wake and he would be gone and Thor—Thor would think he had fled.  Gone in the night without a word.





	At the End of the Day

Loki had no idea what had happened.  Finding sleep elusive, he had gone to the ship’s bridge, hopeful of company and disappointed in those hopes; he had settled for lounging in Thor’s makeshift throne and doing a little idle stargazing.  He had known the names of some of these constellations once, centuries ago.  Schoolroom memories, dusty with time.  He could pick out Earth, of course, since it was no good dreading arriving at a place you couldn’t identify, but aside from that he was adrift.

It occurred to him that in certain places of the galaxy, one would still be able to see the brightness of Asgard, and would be able to for years and years to come.

Not from Earth, though.  And not that it would matter, since he was still half-sure Thor was leading him to a cozy little prison cell.

Small wonder he had trouble sleeping if—

A flash of intense violet light snapped across his vision and then, suddenly, he was on a beach.

So here he was.  On a beach.

The sorcerer again?  But his power surely could not extend so far.  Still, he said, “Strange?  If this is some game of yours, I am not amused.”

Only silence greeted him.

Then he sighed—half in exasperation, half in relief—and shook his head.  The Grandmaster.  Of course.  He’d fitted up both his palace and his more… entertaining ships with holograms and sensual projections; it was no surprise the _Statesman_ would sport the same amenities.  Loki must have simply triggered one without meaning to.  They were lucky it hadn’t happened before.  Or, more interestingly, maybe it had been happening constantly and everyone had been prudishly keeping it to themselves.

“Deactivate,” he said firmly.

Nothing.  He rolled his eyes and conjured up his best impression of the Grandmaster.

“That’s enough for just now, sweet thing.”

Still nothing.  So it was probably not a mere sensory overlay of the actual bridge—that made sense, because the flash had changed his position, too, from sitting to standing.  A shame.  If this had only been a painted backdrop so the Grandmaster could fuck his more nubile guests while enjoying an ocean view, Loki could have at least fumbled his way around knocking into things until he found the actual exit of the actual bridge; he would have had some confidence he was moving in the same space.  But it was more likely that the chair had jacked into his brain—an appalling thought—and was playing some predetermined masturbatory fantasy for him.  He had no idea what this would look like to anyone who walked in on him.  He could only hope the simulation wouldn’t insist on him climaxing before it would terminate the program.

He sighed.  “Very well.  Begin!  Present me with delicacies and debaucheries so we can have done with this.”

“She’s not coming out today, you know,” a voice said behind him.

Loki turned, ready to be seduced.  It was an elderly man with hairy ears, a knobby cane, and a cataract-milky eye.

Perhaps he was giving the Grandmaster too little credit, but Loki wasn’t sure his taste had run exactly _this_ eclectic.

“Hello,” he said with cautious politeness.  “Ah, who won’t be coming out today, exactly?”

“Venus or a selkie or whoever it is you’re trying to call up out of the waves to hop on your cock.”  The man squinted at him.  “You’re dressed a little funny, aren’t you?  You filming something?”

Shit.  Earth.  He would know that strange obsession with film production anywhere.  “Yes.  I am participating in the making of one of your motion pictures.  A loose adaptation of the Chitauri Invasion, as you can see.”  He gestured to his clothes.  Look, I am an actor playing myself.  That’s why you think I look familiar.

“And what’s a Chitauri when it’s at home, son?”

Well, he certainly hoped this man would be in the honor guard to greet them at their proper arrival on Earth, if he had that short a memory.  “You don’t recall the Chitauri invasion of New York?”

“New York’s a long way from here.”

Oh, yes, he’d forgotten the bizarre way those people cordoned off their bits of planet.  “Nevertheless, your world surely isn’t frequently overcome with extraterrestrial invasions.”

The man’s one good eye lit up and for an unbearable moment Loki felt a bottomless need to see Odin again; to see Odin somehow pleased with him.  “That’s what you’re doing, then?  I love all that shit, you know.  _ET_ and that American _Roswell_ and Mulder and Scully.”

A slow suspicion dawned.  “I think we may be talking at cross-purposes, but this has nonetheless been most informative.”  What did one do with a Midgardian when trying to be nice?  Pat them on the head?  After a moment’s consideration, he reached into his pocket and conjured up one of his lesser daggers and held it out hilt first.  “With my compliments.”

The man’s gnarled hand closed slowly around it.  “What’s that?  A movie prop?”

“Yes.  You’ll find it quite valuable should you ever wish to sell it.  It was forged in the heart of a dying star.”

“Whose?  That Skeet Ulrich’s?  Susan Sarandon’s?”  The man laughed.  “Ah, they come and go like the tide.  I won’t be getting rid of this anytime soon.  I’ll show it to my grandkids, they’ll get the biggest kick of your life out of it.  Thanks.  I’ll get clear of your shot now.  What’s it, aerial?”  But he didn’t wait for an answer, only tramped off, the dagger now bouncing perilously in the pocket of his thick mustard-colored sweater.

An elderly man, but not a witless one.  He’d had a barrage of references Loki could only assume to be too culturally-specific for the All-Speak to translate properly, so he was aware enough of the world.  He would have remembered the Chitauri if he had ever heard of them, and he would have heard of them.  Not a sensory overlay, not a simulation, and not a strange instance of spontaneous teleportation.

Or, rather, not _simply_ a strange instance of spontaneous teleportation.

He took one last look around for Midgardian bystanders and then, with anticipation tight in his chest, called out, “Heimdall, open the Bifrost!”

It took perhaps a second or two longer than he could remember it having ever taken before, but then, just as he was beginning to think—with an awful gratitude—that he’d been wrong, the Bifrost swept him up and carried him home.

To Asgard.

Asgard unfallen.

He fell to his knees the moment he was through, just for the sake of pressing his hands to the cool floor of the Observatory.  He would have known it anywhere.  He had written his correspondence here sometimes, lying on the floor with his nose almost to his paper, waiting for Thor and his friends to come back from some adventure.  Loki the Sentinel, they’d said.  Being on the lookout for their homecoming let him have some scant importance without the humiliation of begging for a place in their party and maybe being refused.  All that longing and anger and envy soaked into this cold metal floor like wine into cloth.  He had been a living stain on this place.  He could feel it still.

He looked up and saw Heimdall in all his resplendent armored glory.  There was caution in those eyes, and if he had not known Heimdall well enough formerly to be able to read it, he knew him well enough now.

“I heard your call,” Heimdall said.  “And knew you—but not like this.”

“Well, try to contain your obvious hysteria.  What year is it?”

Heimdall told him and put down a hand to help him up off the floor.  “And how much older are you, if we’re trading questions?  A few centuries, I would think.”

That stung.  “A little less than a decade, actually, and don’t smirk at me.  They’ve been hard years.  We can’t all have your carefree good looks well into our second millennium—how do you see the things you see and look as young as you do?”

Heimdall shrugged.  “I keep out of the sun.”

It was strange to hear Heimdall jest while he still wore that face-splitting golden helm; time aboard the ship had gotten Loki accustomed to the looser-limbed Heimdall of Asgard-in-exile, his locks down around his shoulders, his smile ready, but he had thought that laughter new, fermented only through bitterness and the darkness of banishment.  Cultured, in short, like his own.  But no, this Heimdall stood ready to be amused by himself, which meant Loki had simply never before… what?  Given him the opportunity for cleverness?  Treated him as someone who could have a conversation?

 _Well,_ he thought defensively, _if you dress like a statue, you shouldn’t be surprised if people treat you like one._

“Prince Loki?”

Concern, yet.

Loki met Heimdall’s eyes, wondering what they saw when they looked at him.

“What made the years hard?  Have you come to warn us?”

“I haven’t _come_ at all.  I’ve fallen, apparently—it’s a habit—and here I am.  When and where I would least like to be.”

“I look around and I see the Nine Realms as peaceful as they have ever been.”

Yes.  Shining and innocent and ready to be handed over to a younger, more foolish Thor who would approach their problems with all the subtlety he was traditionally known for.  Not Loki’s problem, not this time.  And what had he known of it anyway?  Thor had been oafish and strong-willed, but the responsibility of rule itself might have calmed him.  Could he say truthfully that he had spoiled Thor’s coronation out of some higher calling and not simply out of spite?  He no longer knew, if he’d ever known at all.

He had stood at Thor’s side through his second coronation.

He hated his younger self intensely.  Maybe he should commit a strange kind of suicide while he was here.

“Why dread coming here?” Heimdall said.  “And as I was hardly searching the cosmos for a second Loki, why call to me if you didn’t want to come home?”

 _Welcome home,_ Heimdall had said to him, when he had come to join the fight.

“Likewise a habit.  And I had no other ready way to confirm my suspicion.”  If he told them about Hela, would that put an end to her future as easily as she had put an end to Mjolnir?  But he could not stand here and see his city and not warn it against the coming fall.  Maybe there was naught they could do about Hela, even with years to prepare, but they should try.  Besides, it would be a handy way of showing up O—

Odin was still alive.

His mother was still alive.

He swallowed, pretending to pick up where he had left off.  “I would not have come back deliberately.  There’s nothing here for me but pain.”

“Why?  What troubles you?”

“I trouble myself.  Should you not take me to see the All-Father?”  How the words burned his mouth.  He would rather they burned someone else.  “This is what you’re famous for to me, you know, this tendency to satisfy your own curiosity at the cost of your duty.”

“When have I done that?”

“You’re all questions this morning.  I’m not inclined to have this conversation right now.  It is, what, mere days before Thor is to be crowned?”  It had been early in the year—if they had passed that date already, certainly Heimdall would not be so easy with him.  No, this was before his fall from grace, before everything.  Only not by very much.

“A fortnight,” Heimdall said, still studying him.  “If you seek the All-Father, you of course know where to find him.  I wouldn’t presume to lead you to him as though you needed an introduction.  Or a minder.  You are who you say you are, I can see that much.  You need no escort.”  He took off his helm.  “But I will keep you company if you wish it.  It grieves me to see you distressed.”

“That’s droll.”

Heimdall shook his head.  “I didn’t speak in play.  And I’m not sure why you think I would.”

“You grieve to see me distressed?  You don’t think that an overstatement?  It’s been ten years, not ten centuries, I remember very well that we were not—are not—friends.”

“You are my prince.”

“ _Thor_ is your prince.”

“My loyalty is capacious,” Heimdall said, “and can accommodate two princes.”

He did not need this.  He did not need to know exactly how much he had carelessly cast aside.  It was like a row of needle-sharp teeth pressing against his heart.

“Save it for Thor,” he said.  But, craven in the end, he added, “I would have your company, though, if you would still give it.”

Heimdall would and did.  Side by side, they walked in silence down the length of the Rainbow Bridge.  Halfway, Loki thought of the obvious and cast a light glamour over himself so he would not confuse everyone they passed on their way to the throne room.  Thus unstopped, they made easy progress, Loki soaking up Asgard all the while.  There he had held his plays.  There he had rigged a bucket of horse piss to fall on Thor’s head to interrupt—well, Loki could not remember, but he could remember how Thor had reeked afterwards.  It had been very satisfying.  There he had play-fought with Fandral, when Fandral was still more his friend than Thor’s.  There Sif had pinned him up against the wall and kissed him on a dare, their faces both burning cauldron-red.  All of it gone now.  All of it here now.

He was so lost in the details of carvings and the millwork on the walls that he did not notice they were passing into the throne room until they were there.

_Mother._

He grabbed involuntarily at Heimdall’s arm.  “I need everyone gone,” he said.  His voice unsteady.  “Everyone but the… the family.”

“The younger you included?” Heimdall said, his eyebrows raised.

Loki hadn’t even noticed himself.  A hatred so intense and hot it could scald him from the inside-out flared in his chest, bright as a torch.  “The younger me included.”

Heimdall did it quietly—with what words to Odin, Loki did not know.

Odin All-Father, enthroned.  Frigga, alive.  Thor, young and unworried.

 _I did not want to leave you, brother,_ he thought.  It wrenched at him.  If he were truly in his own past, and he changed it now, he would never again catch up to the Thor he had left behind.  Either that future would be scrubbed away or the universe would split into two paths taken in parallel, with no way for Loki to cross from one to the other.  He was killing them just by being here.  Or—almost worse, in the selfishness of his heart—he was not.  Their lives would go on without him.  They would wake and he would be gone and Thor—

Thor would think he had fled.  Gone in the night without a word.

But Loki had not wanted this.  He had wanted only to make it not, as Thor had put it, the end of the day; he had wanted to prove that there was still time for him to change.  He had wanted Thor to think well of him.

He would have gone to Earth.  He would have complained about it, yes, but he would have gone, come what might, because he wanted, with an intensity and unsoundness of mind that surpassed anything that had come on him in the Void, to abide by that one particular promise.   _I’m here._

Whenever he stood within reach of anything good, anything at all, it crumbled into ash.

And now here was his choice and it was no choice at all.  If he left Asgard to its fate, he might see his Thor again, but he could never look him in the eyes.

“Should I go?” Heimdall said.  Words for his ears alone.

He didn’t know why Heimdall was treating him like he was made of glass.  “No.  Stay.”  He didn’t know why he was all but encouraging it.

“What is behind this?” Odin said.  His voice was conversational.  True power never needed to shout, he had told Loki once, and yet Loki could remember him shouting time and time again; had he felt powerless then?  “You should know I don’t relish a mystery.”

He knew.  Odin saved his relish for endless deception—so long as he was on the right end of it.

And yet at the end of it, Odin had again called him his son.

“You would have relished uproar still less,” Loki said, and brought his glamour down, showing himself.

His mother leaned forward, her hand over her mouth.  “Loki?”  She looked to the side, as if to confirm her youngest son still there where she had left him.

Loki met his own eyes across the years.

_This is your doing.  You ungrateful, puling brat, you spoiled, selfish little shit, you bastard mistake, you cuckoo in the nest.  I should cut your throat into a second lying smile.  Yes, you should look scared of me.  I am the only one in this room who knows what you are._

“Yes,” he said.  “Loki.  The Loki of ten years from now, here to warn you, Odin All-Father, that your secrets will out sooner than you would like.”

“Have a care for your words,” Thor said, coming to his feet.  “I don’t trust that you are my brother, and it is not—”

“I had entirely forgotten how annoying you were at this age,” Loki said.  “I was right about that much.  As things stand, you are entirely ill-suited for the throne.”

“You dare to—”

Heimdall said, “He is Loki.  I don’t know the nature of his words, but I will vouch for the truth of his person.”

“Sit down, Thor,” Odin said.  “You prove what he says more with each passing second.  Restrain your temper or I will restrain it for you.”

Oh, how he hated the tiny suppressed smirk that flickered across his younger self’s face just then.

“This is a conversation I will have with our visitor alone,” Odin went on.

Loki shook his head.  “No.  Not this time.  I will speak openly here and now or I will speak openly to all of Asgard, All-Father— _that_ is your choice.”

“Do you dictate to me, my son?”

He would enjoy this.  He really would.  Odin thought to pull his strings?  Loki would show him exactly where they had been cut.  And he would land a blow on the callow, traitorous boy he had been, and he would enjoy that even more.  “I do, but then again, I am not your son.  I am the end result of your long-ago scheme for peace, of the babe you lifted off the flagstones of a Jotunn temple.  A Frost Giant cloaked in Aesir skin.  Would you like me to tell you how it all works out?”

“What?” Thor said.  His face was so innocent it hurt.  He should have been a child, to look so.  “Loki,” and those words were for his proper brother, his brother at his right hand.  “Loki, what madness is this?”

“A runt,” Loki went on.  He liked how bloodless his younger self’s face had gone.  “Small for a giant.  No wonder Laufey left you to die—”

Odin slammed Gungnir against the floor with such force that even Loki recoiled.  “You will not speak so to my son!”

“But he lies,” the younger Loki said.  “Father.  He lies—doesn’t he?”

“Oh, he lies,” Loki said mincingly.  “He lies constantly.  Almost as much as you.”  He raised his hand and a muzzle snapped out of nowhere onto the younger Loki’s mouth.  “Quiet now.  Grown-ups are talking.”

“Remove it,” Frigga said.  She wrapped one arm around her counterfeit son.  Horrorstruck, terrified, yet even now defensive of him, and he had let himself do what would part him from her when she most needed him.  “Now, Loki.  You hurt yourself for no reason.”

He shook his head.  “Not for no reason, I assure you.  And I will not take that off him until I am done.  Not even for you.”

“What has happened to you?”  Her voice was barely more than a whisper now.  “What have these years done to you, to make you heartless?”

He could not bear to look at her.  “I made many attempts to carve my heart from my chest, my queen,” he said, “and I suppose I finally succeeded.  You see me at the height of my accomplishment.  Thor, it is not madness.  I am Laufey’s son by birth.  Odin thought to make some complicated peace arrangement, who knows how, but time scuppers it.  I outlived whatever usefulness I once had to the throne—or at least I will have outlived it in a few weeks’ time, by your coronation.  Which I will ruin, by the way.  All-Father, nothing to say to any of this?”

Odin’s eyes were glacier-pale.  Loki could not read them at all.  “I think perhaps I should let you talk a while, my son.  Until you exhaust yourself.”

“There’s that vaunted wisdom.  Anyway, Thor, that crown you anticipate does not touch your brow for years.  I make sure of it.  I have my excuses—some of them even good—but mostly I just hate you, brother.  It is a poison in my blood, that you are gold and I am less than brass—well, you can imagine how I feel when I learn that I am a monster.  But I don’t know that when I let the Frost Giants into Asgard with some sweet whispers about how they might recover the Casket.  I know of the Destroyer, naturally.  I lead them to their deaths just to disrupt your big day, but I’m afraid I derive very little satisfaction from it, in the end.  Because you cannot stand to let such an incursion go unanswered, no, so you convince Heimdall to let you through to Jotunheim, despite the All-Father’s orders, and there you bring havoc down on all our heads.  And in the process, I learn what I am.”

Thor ignored everything pertinent about all of this to say, “You hate me?”

“He hates you,” Loki said, nodding to his muzzled self, who had gone entirely blank-eyed.  “I love you.  Not that it does either of us any good.  And I fear you’re not listening.  This is going to take twice as long if you don’t listen.”

“Go on, then,” Odin said levelly.  “Tell us all.”

He exhaled.  “You banish Thor to Midgard, where he apparently has an amazing array of life-changing experiences.  I confront you about my birth, you fall into the Odinsleep, I wear your crown.  Send the Destroyer after Thor, to no avail.  Let Laufey into Asgard to kill you in your bed so that I can save you, destroy Jotunheim, be your son.  But Thor intervenes, full of compassion for his fellow beings.  And I fall.”  He looked down at his hands, at the clean row of fingernails.  “I fall to the bottom of the Void.”

Odin shook his head.  “No living thing can survive the Void.”

“I did not feel especially alive,” Loki said.  “I wanted to die.  I thought I had.  Instead I fell into the hands of—”  But he did not want to speak of that.  And he wearied of reviewing his transgressions to them.  He did not want to tell them of his weakness, that he had let himself be made into one of Thanos’s tools, a hook to pull the Tesseract into Thanos’s reach; did not want to tell them that he had not even made a success of it.  That more people had died.

“Into whose hands, Loki?” Heimdall said.

Loki had almost forgotten he was there.  He had voiced no outrage, no disbelief, no disgust.  “The Mad Titan.  I don’t recommend it.”  He looked again to Odin.  “Malekith lives.  The Convergence comes.  He will kill Mother if we do not kill him first.”

“And in your time, I assume we do not.”

“We do not.  I am in the dungeons—”

“Why?” Thor said.

“Did you miss where I tried to kill you?  Where I tried to destroy an entire Realm?  I’ve even left out the part where I invaded Midgard and we fought again, but really, brother, I think the reasoning behind it was already plain.  You were heartily for it at the time, but you do break me out so I can take you to Malekith.”

“Do I kill him?”

“Yes!  Of course you kill him!”  He rubbed at his forehead.  Sighed.  “You kill him.  You think me dead—I died in your arms with excruciating nobility, it was all very heartfelt until I awoke alive and abandoned.  I came here once more.  Wrapped your mind in confusion, All-Father, and dropped you on Midgard like an unwanted parcel.  Wore your face and sat your throne for years, until Thor figured things out.  Not a bad run, all things considered.  We went to Earth to retrieve you.”

“Strange,” Odin said, his tone bland.  “That I would survive for years, mindless and discarded.”

“I didn’t leave you on the _street_ ,” Loki said.  “I put you where the Midgardians put their elderly.”

“I am curious about the omissions you make in telling your tale, my son.”

This time he let the word stand.  He controlled himself.  “It’s when we are with you on Midgard that you tell us about Hela.”

 _There_ was the confusion and pain he had wanted.  “Hela?”

“Who is Hela?” Thor said.

“Your sister,” Frigga said.  So she had known, after all.  Loki had wondered about that.  “The goddess of death.  Your father’s first heir, long before you were born.  Long imprisoned.”

“A rite of passage among Odin’s brats,” Loki said.  “Imprisonment, banishment, and imprisonment again—and I would have faced execution, had my queen not argued for my life.  My sins seem less than Hela’s, but then again, you could not kill her, could you?  Was that because she was too powerful, or because you simply loved her more?”  He did not wait for an answer.  He directed his words now at Thor.  “Hela craved war and subjugation, conquest and ruin, and once upon a time, that was the way of Asgard.  She rode at Odin’s side and enacted his commands.  Her corrupt heart was his own, until he turned to peace.  Then dear Hela didn’t fit the image.”

“She killed innocents,” Odin said.

“Do not speak to me of innocence,” Loki said.  “You have never known the word.  You had infinite mercy for yourself, but none for her and none for me.  You locked her in a box, like a memory you would forget, and you told us _naught_ of her, all our lives, until _you_ died and _she_ rose and Thor and I had to destroy all of fucking Asgard to put an end to her!  Your kingdom burns, All-Father.  What little is left of it, Thor bears out on a ship, headed for Earth.  And that is where I was, before I found myself here.  That is what has happened to me.  You and your secrets and your monstrous children.  And _you_.”

He stalked toward himself, a dagger sliding into his hand.

“You deserve whatever fate I would give you,” Loki said to his younger reflection.  “And I would give you so much.  Unleashed, allowed, I would flay you alive, you pathetic, poisonous ruin of a thing.  Bastard-brother, bastard-son.”

“That is _enough_!”  Frigga struck him across the face.

She had never laid a hand on him before.  He held his cheek now, shocked.

She was white-faced, crying.  “I do not know what is worse.  To hear my son say such cruelties or to hear them said to my son.   I will not tolerate it, Loki.  Remove that muzzle.”

He didn’t know why he fought her, when all he wanted to do was put his head against her shoulder once more.  “He may as well get used to wearing one.  I had to.”

“He has not yet done what you accuse him of,” Odin said.

“He will.”

“Loki, please,” Thor said.

And that he could not resist.  He raised his hand and the muzzle unlatched itself and disappeared.

How he had loathed that contraption.  His gums had bled for days afterwards and he had not been able to get rid of the taste of metal for even longer than that; knowing that had to be only in his head had not helped.  In the dungeon, he’d had little else but his head and that taste in his mouth, copper and iron.

“Well?” Loki said to his younger self.

That Loki looked at him.  He rubbed at his lips.  At last he said, “Am I… am I so rotten inside as that?”

And, fuck him, fuck him all the way to the gates of Hel, there were tears bright in his eyes.  His lower lip fucking quivered.  And Loki knew he would not stoop so low as to do that on purpose—his pride would be too great for that for a few more years at least.

“Save yourself from it, you whiny brat,” Loki said, and walked away.

If he had stayed a moment longer, he would have voiced his opinion that the easiest route to safety in this case would be a glass of wine, a hot bath, and a cold touch of steel to the wrists.

He sought out a hidden alcove on one of the far outside walls and sat down it, his back against the cool stone.  He pressed his hand to his forehead, gray exhaustion pushing into his mind like a cloud heavy with rain.  He could sleep now, and wasn’t that funny?  If he could have slept before, he wouldn’t be here.  He would be where he belonged.

Heimdall found him, which was no surprise.  He hadn’t bothered to cloak himself.

“Oh,” Loki said, just now remembering it, “I also had you framed for treason.”

Heimdall nodded.  “I thought you must have done something like that, since I would have seen through your disguise.  I’m relieved to know you didn’t kill me.”

“You went on the run.  I did not give chase.  Something you might learn, by the way.”

“Since I have come after you?  Move your feet and I’ll sit.”

“Do not command me,” Loki said, but he did indeed move to let Heimdall sit with his back against the opposite wall.  He closed his eyes.  “In my time, you’ll think me gone of my own free will, likewise running.  When you cannot see me, you’ll think I’ve simply hidden myself from your gaze.”

“Can you do that?”

It might be the first time he had ever heard Heimdall perturbed.  He half-smiled.  “Yes.  I’ve been doing it since I was… oh, two hundred or so.  You have no idea how oppressive it is to try to make mischief with you around.”

“It seems to me you made more than mischief.”

“Yes.  Did you come to fetch me back?”

“You did leave things in disarray.  Especially with yourself, but also with your brother.”

“I only want to sleep,” Loki said.  “I came from the middle of the night, you know.”  But he stood.  As irritating as he could find this younger, blonder, more buffoonish Thor, he could not easily endure the thought of any Thor again a casualty to his schemes.  He had needed to do what he’d done, to reveal Odin’s secrets and his own, but he had done it with a hammer when a touch would have sufficed.  They were brothers after all, then.  He wielded his own brutal force.  Perhaps it was the only way they were alike.  Perhaps there was damage between them instead of blood.

When Heimdall took him back to the throne room, Loki almost wished for chains.  He wished he could be dragged back, so he would not have to damn himself with his own footsteps, tread by tread.  Ever since Sakaar, he had not been able to get back to a place where there were no choices to be made, had not been able to get to where he would not have to decide to go on.  Well, he didn’t want to.  And he did not want to see how he had left them.

Odin, gray-faced and shaky-handed, looked ready to fall into his Odinsleep then and there— _could I start doing that?  It would be so very convenient_ —and Frigga could not decide between tending to him and tending to her sons, both of whom looked nearly as bad as their father and, being young and stupid, were too blinded by their own cares to see that their mother had not yet stopped weeping.  Thor could not look at his brother.  And Loki’s old self could not look anywhere but the floor.  He seemed about to vomit.  Against his will, Loki felt some faint compassion for that know-nothing boy.  He remembered him too well to love him, but he could pity him a little.  At least when he himself had been unmasked, he had been too mad to know it was happening.  He had not seen himself step off the cliff.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  What useless words.  And yet he suddenly couldn’t remember if he had ever said them to his own Thor.  Perhaps to his mother.  Certainly not to his—to Odin.  And he was still not much inclined to say it to _him_.  “I should have done that better.”

Thor laughed.  He sounded either drunk or mad.  “And you my clever brother?  Time has sapped your wits if that is all you can think to say to us now.  Please, new Loki, tell us more of how we will destroy each other.”

“You destroy no one,” Loki said quietly.  “You and Mother—you are not tainted by all this.  You make a good king.  You are honorable.”  _You forgave me all_ —but there was a grotesque lump in his throat, stopping the words.

And this Thor was not hearing them anyway.  “Honorable?  When I left you to languish in the Void, in a dungeon?  When I could not save Mother from this Malekith creature?  When I could not save Asgard?”

“Asgard isn’t a place, it’s a people,” Loki said wearily.

“No, it isn’t!” Thor said.  “It’s a place!  You’re standing there!”

That was on him for not anticipating that.  “We were going to build a new Asgard.”

“How?”  Thor’s eyes were wet, too.  “When we have nothing for a foundation?  Nothing but deceit and shadows and… and treason?”

Loki shrugged.  “We have you.”

“Damn you, brother.”  Thor turned away from him; turned to Loki’s younger counterpart, who still had not looked up.  “Loki, will you not lift your head?”

“He has not spoken since you left,” Frigga said to Loki now, a cold accusation in her voice.

_I am not a mender of broken things.  Maybe try giving him a good hard slap, it certainly gave me a start._

“If I could get easily get through to myself, I would hardly _be_ myself, would I?”

Thor at this time in his life was drowning in earnestness, and he slopped some of that over his little brother now, dampening him with sentiment: “Loki, whatever you are, whatever you feel, whatever you could do—whatever _he_ has done—you are still my brother.”

“I am not,” the younger Loki said.  He raised his eyes at last, and, oh, good, they were filled with defiance, that so often spelled good news for him and everyone around him.  “I’ve always been an outsider to you, to all of you, and I never—”

“I really will muzzle you again,” Loki said.  “Do not tempt me.”

“You are no outsider,” Thor said—entirely to his own particular brother.  Loki was almost touched by how thoroughly Thor was ignoring him: he had given Thor intrigue, adventure, danger, threats, enemies, and Thor had turned aside from it all to nurse his brother’s hurt feelings.  What a fool Loki had been to miss that.  He had grievances, yes, but what did they matter alongside this?  “If I have made you feel one, that is on my head, and you were right—or would be right—to knock the crown away before it settled on me.  If you are Jotunn, we will not ever make war with Jotunheim, but only with those who would diminish you for your birth.  Loki, do not nurse this hatred.”  He touched the younger Loki’s cheek.  “Do not hate me, brother.”

Across the room, Loki turned away from this.

“I do not hate you,” his other self said, his voice thick with tears like a hurt child’s.  “I only hate—”

“Yourself, by all evidence,” Odin said.

“Excellent,” Loki said crisply.  “Interrupt your mad, would-be murderer of a foundling, that will ensure his love forever.”

“ _Will you shut up_ ,” his other self hissed at him.

“Oh, the kitten extends his claws!  Don’t bat at me, you idiot, I’m the only one here who can’t be fooled by you.”

“You are fooled by yourself,” his mother said.  Her voice was calm now—horribly pitying.  “Oh, Loki.  My darling, you’ve lost so much.”

“I destroyed so much.”

“And lost it.”  She came across the room to him and he could not believe it: the light tread of her step, the sight of her coming closer when he had thought never to see her again.  “We lied to you.  And if you stand here to help us, you did not succeed in tearing out your own heart, my son—but I am so sorry that you ever tried.”

His eyes were hot.  He closed them, but tears ran down his face nonetheless.  He said, “He will think I left,” and he heard the awful fragility of his voice, exactly as worthy of mockery as his younger self’s, but she only took him in her arms.

* * *

Loki spent that night in the palace, in the wing that, he bleakly observed, was by tradition reserved for embarrassing relations: quite lavish yet quite far from the court proper.  He had no quarrel with this.  He wanted to be seen as little as they wanted anyone to see him.

He would not be here long.  He could not stay in this place.

He supposed he could take a ship out to Sakaar.  It would be a long, dangerous trip, and it was pleasant to suppose that it might kill him without him needing to decide to die; if it did not, he could find the Valkyrie and dunk her head in a barrel of cold water until she came to her senses, let her pummel the shit out of him until she had reinvigorated herself.  It was a waste to let her rot there.  Besides, if it came down again to out-and-out battle with Hela, they would need her.  And Sif would like it…

He fell asleep thinking these things.  His dreams were blank and featureless until suddenly they had the elderly man from Earth in them, saying, “She’s not coming out today.  Not today, no.”

He woke to a bit of apple peel falling on his face.

There was no moment when he had to remember what had happened.  At least there was that: he woke with the cold knowledge that his life was already done.  To his Thor, the day was over, and Loki was Loki.

It did not move him to be any more charitable to the young Thor sitting above him, eating an apple and staring at him.

“You’ve been asleep a long time,” Thor said, his voice accusatory.

Loki swiped the scrap of peel off his cheek.  “Not long enough if I’m still faced with your bizarre decision to bleach your eyebrows.  No wonder I sabotaged your kingship.”

“Fandral said it would look becoming.”

“I’m sure he did, and I’m equally sure he’s gotten many a free drink on the story ever since.”

Thor frowned.  “You _are_ Loki.  You sound like yourself.  Was all you said yesterday true?”

“Given my history, probably not.”  But it was not much fun to spar with this Thor, who had had adventures and battles and legendary seductions but had never had a serious thought in his life and was clearly doing his very best to muster his way to one now, unaided by spunky Midgardian genius-women and the heartbreak of banishment.  All this Thor had was the heartbreak Loki himself had given him, fresh enough that the shattered pieces were still too sharp to handle.

Loki leveraged himself upright.  To his surprise, Thor produced a second apple and handed it over.

Loki turned it around and around in his hands.  “Yes.  What I said yesterday was true.”

“Hm,” Thor said.  “You’ve been busy then, brother.”

Thor always had been able to make him laugh; Thor and Thor alone.  “Haven’t I?  Nothing for centuries and then a very, very eventful decade.”

“And we have a sister.”

“She breaks your hammer,” Loki said, not entirely without malice.

“She doesn’t.”

“Smashes it in one hand.  Crumbles it like a snowball.”  He took a bite of apple.  “We haven’t had fresh fruit on the ship in weeks.  This is like something out of Idunn.”

“Is that why you came back in time?  Fresh fruit?”

That soured it.  “I did not come back deliberately.”

Thor frowned.  “Not to change what you’ve done?”

“I can’t change what I’ve done.  I was going to go on from it and now I can’t even do that.”

“You’re still alive,” Thor said.  Rather heartlessly, in Loki’s opinion.  “What is to stop you?”

“Because I am not even in my own time, you nitwit.”

“Go on in our time.”

He was able to say it only because he already knew he would leave.   _But I miss my brother_ —but no, no.  He could not say it at all, not to this fresh-faced boy who had enough to contend with in his own thorn-thicketed Loki, all tears and venom, in his unknowable father and his grieving mother, in his lost sister who must be slain or saved.  Slain, Loki thought, but that was ever his first instinct.  He was, he supposed, Odinson.

“I don’t understand how you look,” Thor said softly.  “I always thought I knew you well.  But you have had secrets on top of secrets and you have kept your heart from me.  But I have always loved you, Loki.  I would have heard whatever you had wanted to say to me—well, if you had made me hear.  And you could have!  I don’t understand why you didn’t just turn me into a newt and threaten to step on me until I listened to you.”

He had turned so quickly from wanting Thor’s attention to wanting to punish Thor for not more readily giving it to him.  “Because I was a fool.  Vindictive, petty.”

“Was?  You seem vindictive and petty enough _now_ , brother, so—”

“I am your _older_ brother at this exact moment,” Loki said.  “Pray treat me as such.”

Thor shook his head.  “Never.”

* * *

It was Frigga who came to see him in the afternoon.

“Are you going to stay confined here?”

“How else would my never-ending stream of visitors know where to find me?”

She sat down on his bed.  Her hand was suddenly, shockingly warm against his cheek.  He turned his head, but her touch followed him, undoing him more and more with each passing second.  “Why do you run from me?”

Dozens of reasons.  He had betrayed her love a thousand times over.  He had tried to murder her son.  And when he had the chance to see her alive again, her face flushed with color, her eyes loving despite everything, he knew in his heart that he would still turn away from her to return to the place he had wanted above all else.

“I always knew I had your love,” he said.  “I did not doubt that.  It should have contented me.”

“You were seldom content,” she said.  “My poor boy.  Even as a babe.  We had so little we could feed you, we did not know how to make you stop crying—your father went to Jotunheim himself and asked for a wet nurse.  He settled for words, in the end, and we learned to pour your milk into fresh snow to give it to you.  I think your insides shifted more slowly than your outsides, clever though you were from the beginning.  The number of hours I spent holding you on my lap, showing you what Aesir organs looked like so your seidr would craft them for you while you slept.”

This was disturbing enough that he finally looked at her.  “What an appalling notion.”

“We should have taught you what you were.”  There was so much grief locked in her face.  “We had you change.  I don’t know why.”

“I changed first.”  Despite himself, he had never found that part of Odin’s story hard to believe.  It was only natural that he would want to shed that blue skin the moment he saw another choice.  “You only helped.  And…”  It was hard for him to say this.  “What is wrong with me—my queen, it goes beyond the frost in my blood.  When I finally chose to struggle with what I was, I chose the wrong thing.”

“You seem to think my son takes too little weight on himself,” she said softly.  “Yet you take too much.”

“Believe me, I am not a martyr in the ordinary way of things.  I have my pride.  Only not here, in this place, like this.  I returned here three times—first in chains, then in disguise, and finally as myself.  As the best part of myself.  It should have ended there.”

“What part of yourself came back the third time?  What was your best, Loki?”

He did not tell her to stop stroking his hair.  He was, as he had already admitted, weak; he did not tell himself not to brag, either, because certainly he had little enough to brag about, he might as well make the most of it.  “The only reason we were able to save the lives we did, in the fall of Asgard, is that I brought back a very large ship.  I joined the fight.  It was extremely impressive, and I am proud to admit I did it from the same motives I have always had: to have acclaim and to spite Thor.”

She laughed.  He had forgotten what her laugh sounded like.  “How exactly did you spite your brother by saving people’s lives?”

“Well, he’d strongly implied I wouldn’t.”

“You certainly made him look the fool, then.”

“You are mocking me.  You are my _mother_.”

“I know, sweetheart,” she said.  She kissed his forehead.  “Poor dear—all that trickery… wherever did you think you got it from?”

* * *

Odin, of course, summoned him.  Loki disliked being summoned.  He disliked it all the more when it was done via a thought, an idea that winged its way into his orbit like a moth: _Come see me._ He had always hated that.

Yet he did go.  He tried not to think about why.

The summons led Loki to one of the smaller libraries.  He had always liked this one as a child, because it had black onyx gargoyles carved into the tops of the bookshelves; he had liked being comfortable around things other people had been afraid of.  And on the rare occasion some adult had entered to scold him for some bit of mischief, he had been able to imagine the gargoyles descending upon their head.  They were his old friends.  Had Odin known that?  Loki had always thought everyone else too inattentive to him to know such things.  He had become secretive because it was pleasant to think that it was his own choice to be overlooked.

He didn’t know where the fault had begun.  Which of them had started it.

He was short on compassion for them both.

“All-Father.”

“I had a long talk with you earlier today,” Odin said.  “In a manner of speaking.”

Loki smiled a brittle smile.  “Convince my younger self to stay on the true and proper path?”

“I convinced you to talk to me.”

“I pity your ears.”

“I had no idea you were so unhappy,” Odin said quietly.  “I would have done anything to keep you from that.  I would that I had seen it before, without such direct intervention by fortune.  You are my son, Loki, and your birth was a strange twist of circumstance, not a fault to be corrected.  I should have told you that when you still listened to me enough to believe.”

“You should have told me about Hela.”  It was the fresher hurt.  “Did I remind you of her?”

“You looked like her, a little.  But it is Thor’s lust for valor, his desire to prove his strength, that I have thought on more.”

“I lusted for valor and strength too,” Loki said.

“Yes.  I have a gift for instilling that, it seems.  I cultivate badly even when I mean to do well, even when I think I know what to weed in my children.  And in myself.”  He took up a pen.  “I will need more details from you, my son, of what happens—and what you think might happen even with your own instigations quelled.”

So they had come to the end of the conversation between father and son.  Now Odin was only a king, Loki only a spy who had bought his knowledge dearly.  He told Odin all, in as much detail as he could, because there was no point in stinting on it, on anything that might help.  He told him what he knew of Thanos’s plans.  He told him of Malekith.  Of Laufey’s anger burning hot in a wasteland of ice.  He told him how Surtur was raised at the end, when there had been no other choice, and it was then that Odin did more than write and murmur; it was then that he reached across the table and covered Loki’s hand with his.  There were faint liver spots on his skin that Loki could not remember ever having noticed before.  The shadows of his veins were darker.

“I used to imagine it sometimes,” Odin said.  “What would have happened if I had raised the three of you together.  Oh, I suppose I never could have, I do not know, but… I always thought, with what you and Thor were like, and adding Hela into the mix of that—when I could smile at it at all, I thought the three of you would wind up destroying the place if your mother and I ever left you alone in it.”

Loki could not speak.  He nodded.

It took hours to go over everything.  At the end, Odin at last put down his pen and massaged his hand— _I should have offered to take that up for him_ , Loki thought, far too late—and said, “That is all I can think to ask.”

“And all I can think to tell.”

“You are leaving us.”  Odin seemed to be trying to smile, but his mouth would not quite take on the shape.  “I can see it in your eyes.”

“You have two sons,” Loki said.  It was the closest he could come to saying what he could not find the words to say.  “You have no need of a third.”

“You are a prince of Asgard.  Your place is with your people.”

He shook his head.  No, he meant, not for him a place of stability.  He could think it fair and right for him to be a prince of Asgard-in-exile—he had a fairly high opinion of his own usefulness to the _Statesman_ —but he could not be as he was and stay in this gilded place.  He would not let them put him in a dungeon—not that they had tried—but he would not have them add him to the murals, either.  Besides, one Loki ought to be enough for anyone.

Odin exhaled.  “What will you do, then?”

“You’ll like it, it’s very adventurous, straight out of a saga.  I’m going to go retrieve the last Valkyrie.”  Perhaps she would agree to go to Jotunheim with him.  If he were going to go there at all, he might as well bring along someone who would be ever-capable of rustling up a stiff drink.

“My son, the roving hero,” Odin said.  “It has a ring to it.”

Loki smiled.  “Do be sure to tell everyone I saved Asgard.”

He touched his father’s hand one last time before he left.

* * *

He didn’t know why he had bothered to entertain the illusion that he would be allowed to escape Asgard without another talk with his younger self.  Wishful thinking.  Loki met Loki at his chamber door on the day of his departure and said, “I’ll walk you to the bridge.”

“Thor told you what time I was leaving,” Loki said.  “I told him not to.”

“And I told him it wasn’t betraying a secret if he told the secret to the same person who had told it to him.  A useful loophole.”

Loki scoffed.  “You think you talk him into things, but Thor does as he likes.  He’s smarter than you realize.”

“Not smart enough to understand that just because he would befriend himself is no reason to think I would befriend _myself_ ,” the other Loki said, which Loki supposed he had to agree with.  “He thinks I want to thank you.  As though I considered it pleasant to be muzzled in front of him and have my chest cracked open to better spill my secrets, secrets even I did not know.  As though I am to be glad that my entire family now thinks me capable of murder and treachery.  He must be smarter than I realize if he is to take up Mjolnir by the right end.”

“True.  It’s not smart to think you a good person capable of gratitude.”

“It’s not smart to think me good after I have told him myself that I am not,” the other Loki said, with an angry flash in his eyes, a whipcrack of magic that was nothing more than a stomp of the foot, absurd histrionic emphasis.  But at last Loki understood him—understood himself.  He knew what conversation they were having.  “You broke down for him exactly how you had betrayed him.  I told him myself that I had already plotted the scheme with the Jotunns.  I wanted him to have no doubt that you and I truly are the same.”

“We are,” Loki agreed.  “So much so that I don’t have to ask you why you would tell him you already had that plan, though I didn’t think of it until three days before I executed it.  You wanted to warn him.”

“He won’t listen,” the other Loki said.

“No, he generally doesn’t.  He’ll learn you’re capable of deception if you insist on teaching him it over and over again—as I said, he’s smarter than is convenient—but he will not learn to rid himself of you.  He’s stubborn that way.  Try not to hate him for it.”

He nipped the two of them through a series of hidden roads to get them to the Observatory faster.  He was willing to talk to himself, but he was not willing for it to be a lengthy conversation.

“Wait, wait,” the other Loki said.  “Show me how you did that.  I haven’t found those ones yet.  Did you learn those when you were disguised as Father, or—”

Loki laughed and patted his younger self’s cheek, liking the appalled reaction this got him.  “Dear little brother.  Try not to get into too much trouble.  Don’t do anything I wouldn’t—well, you understand.”

“I hate you.”

“Yes,” Loki said.  His smile was inflexible; certain.  “I’m sure you do.  But all the same… be good.”

The other Loki pulled back from him, grimacing.  He said, “I will,” and his gaze was steady.  It was workable, perhaps.  Time would tell.

Loki entered the Observatory alone.

“Heimdall,” he said.

Heimdall inclined his head.  “My prince.”

“You are not the worst person to see first and last,” Loki said.  He sounded revoltingly sentimental to his own ears.  He did his best to move on.  “Do you know Sakaar?”

“I do,” Heimdall said, with a look of slight distaste that all but said he hoped Loki was taking a weapon and—given Sakaar’s other choice of entertainment—adequate precautions, as it were.  “It is far, but I’ll still hear you if you call if you find yourself in need of a homecoming.”

“I think not.”

“I think perhaps,” Heimdall said.  “You may find it worth your time to come back to us during the Convergence.  When all is aligned, certain barriers are… quite thin.  In such a moment, flotsam that has washed up on one shore might find itself strangely pulled back to the ship from whence it came.  Provided, of course, that it was in the right spot at the right time.”

The hope pressed against his throat like a knife.  “It’s an interesting theory, certainly.  But you cannot know it.”

“No.  No more than I can know that the Loki you leave behind here will take the shortcut you have given him to be who you are now.  No more than I know what stole you from your ship in the first place.  The universe is strange, Loki, and those of us who wander about in it are the strangest part.  I can only tell you what few things are impossible—and your return to your home is not one of them.”  He held out his hand.  “I hope to see you again.”

“Do you want a glimpse of the future?” Loki said, giving in and clasping hands with him.  “Have it: I never, ever understand you.”

Heimdall smiled at him.  No sworn Guardian of Asgard should have a smile so good-humored in its smugness.  Loki rolled his eyes, closed them, and let the Bifrost take him away.

 

 

**LATER**

Thor didn’t know why he persisted in thinking of dusk and dawn: aboard the _Statesman_ , there was no sun, and they had even had to turn off the artificial light cycle because it had been irreversibly programmed with the Grandmaster’s chirpiest, most unnerving wishes for their good mornings and their sweet dreams.  Yet he still felt the truth of time, on those terms, in his bones.  _Thor is agnostic about clocks,_ Jane had said once to Selvig.  He was saving that to repeat it to Loki when he found Loki—as he was sure he would—on the bridge with a cup of coffee and a glower.  Loki would ask why he was up, Thor would explain that it was dawn, Loki would mime taking his own life out of frustration—

It was good to have him again.  Thor had not often let himself think that, but now, in the small hours of the morning, he allowed it.

But when he strode onto the bridge, it was empty.

Ah, well.  He was disappointed, but it was all for the best, really; he had seen what Loki looked like on days of thin sleep and he would not wish that on them all.  If Loki had finally managed to knock himself out for more than an hour at a time, Thor was pleased for him, and—

There was a strange noise behind him, like a long sheet of paper tearing.  Thor turned.

And it was Loki.  Loki and… Valkyrie?  But they were both dressed strangely, in leather jerkins and loincloths, though Valkyrie had put a thick coat on over hers and wore boots on her feet.  There was snow in Loki’s hair, half-melted, and the whole bridge suddenly had the overwhelming smell of the ocean.  Sea-salt and brine.  There was a curious red tint to Loki’s eyes, as if they had half-rusted, and he was a milky blue with a cold Thor couldn’t feel.

Loki was on him in a moment, like an attack.  The snow on him melted into Thor’s shirt.

“Well, that’s one way of doing it,” Valkyrie said dryly.

“I’m here,” Loki was saying.  Over and over again, as if Thor had ever thought he was anywhere else but back in bed.  “I’m here.”

Thor had no idea what was happening, but he held Loki back just as fiercely.  He had lost him too often to mind finding him again.  He said, “I know, brother.”


End file.
